Hi all; I'm a long-time lurker and first time poster today. Great site; already trawled up a lot of useful information. Planning to attend this years meet-up in Germany as well; it's only a few hours from us and looks great.

I'm planning this year's trip and am looking for some feedback on my plans for a Western Balkans tour. I've done a fair bit of European touring before and last year I made a foray into Morocco for a grand round-trip of that beautiful, crazy country - with my young lady on the back. This time around the plan is to make the journey with the young lady on her own machine - it's her first tour though so I've tried to keep things broken up and fairly easy. I've already planned in one two small off-road jaunts but we won't be attempting anything more substantial than gravel tracks and forest roads. Don't want to scare the poor girl off of two wheels! It's also worth noting that motorcycle travel is, for us, about the travel - not about the manly conquering of bumpy roads!

Anyway; what I am looking for is feedback on my proposed route and suggestions of tweaks we could make. Am I missing something truly amazing that I'll regret not seeing? Is there some secret track you know of that's worth a ride?

We plan to ride from home (Lake Constance) to Venice and spend a few days there before getting on a ferry for Igoumenitsa in Greece. 25hr ferry journey and we're basically on the border of Albania ready to roll. Do any of you have experience of this route? Are there rough seas? Lena does not have sea-legs! Is a cabin an essential, or can you get a halfway decent kip on a seat or camp bed?

From there we're going to follow the coast up a short distance, including the cable ferry crossing that takes you to Ksamil. Then we head for Vergo and plan to take the dirt roads between there and Khardiq - anyone been there? Looks fairly easy from Google Earth. Then we've a day off the bikes doing some canyoning/rafting.

We'll head to Tirana and spend a few days there before heading over to Lake Ohrid, Macedonia and spending a few days there. After that it looks like a nice journey to Mavoro national park where we plan to spend a night before heading to Peja in Kosovo. Looking at Google Maps/Earth it's pretty clear there is a route of some kind heading north through Mavoro national park into Kosovo - does anyone know if it is passable and if the border there is open? My understanding is that Kosovo is a bit of an exception to the EU's usual open borders policy! I'd prefer to go that way rather than take the long way around via one of the main road crossings. If it's not passable at least we see Skopje.

After Peja it's on to Zabljak, Montenegro for some rafting. Then to to Sarajevo and down to Dubrovnik via Mostar - where I will injure myself jumping off of a 24m high bridge. Yay.

From Dubrovnik we head to Hvar island and then on to Plitvice Lakes. From there up to Ljublana, Bled to Grossglockner in Austria via the Vrsic Pass and then onwards to home.

We've got 28 days between landing in Igoumenitsa and needing to be home. I'm doing some pretty long hops some days but never doing two long hops back to back; the whole trip is split up so after a day or two on the bikes there is always a day or two where we don't have to touch them at all if we don't want to. I feel that's better (and easier to organize) than riding a short way every day. Thoughts are appreciated - I am a bit of a slogger; I'll ride 16 hour days when I have to so my opinions may be skewed.

We will be doing this in August - is it advisable to book accommodation early or just wing it when we are there? We're not crossing into Serbia so no worries about border crossings from Kosovo.

Accommodation suggestions are always appreciated as are places to eat; food is probably an even greater passion for me than travel or the bike - if anyone knows some real stand-out places to eat please let me know. We're not talking Haute Cuisine here; but great examples of good cooking are probably a good 50% of what drives me to travel at all!

Rough Google Maps routes below.
Part 1 to Dubrovnik
Part 2 to Home

Thanks in advance for any feedback; we both greatly appreciate it.

- Tim and Lena

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[ Tim | History - NW Italy/French Rivera, Swiss Alps, Morocco | 2016 - Greece > Albania > Macedonia > Kosovo > Montenegro > Bosnia > Slovenia > Austria ]